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Comment by alemanek | Hacker News Reader

Some realtors do in fact list their commissions and fee structure:

Some examples from the market we are looking in.

1. Flat fixed fee and refunds extra: https://arrivva.com/

2. Minimum 1.25-1.5% but refunds 50% of any commission paid above: https://www.walawrealty.com/buy

Minimum for me to work with a company is transparent pricing. Even a range based on levels of service is cool. But, I am not going to waste time on a phone call with no clue as to fee structure.

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The whole agent commission business is already fully shady and at least one class action brought that to light[1]. Both buyer and seller agents benefit from higher home prices and from percentage based commission despite the work being the same regardless of home price. The customers are always the victim.

https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/what-the-...

I've been very pleased to use an attorney on a simple hourly fee who did not have such gross conflicts of interest.

We are not participating in the race to the bottom. There are a lot of 0% fee realtors out there! Try https://www.turbohome.com/, I've seen them on social media

Frankly your responses on this page have convinced me to stay clear of this product.

Sorry, I guess.

Thanks for feedback. Our priority is on good service

I was so excited when I saw this and now I'm disappointed. This kind of statement "quit on trying to win clients that are trying to get the best price" creates a false dichotomy of those who are trying to pay nothing and those willing pay whatever. There are tons of customers in the middle who are happy to pay for important services but think 30K (3% in high COL areas) is too much for the services rendered.

That being said, I think as long as you are honest that "better pricing" isn't your goal then fair enough. It isn't the service for me, but I'm sure some folks will certainly be excited about it.

> We are charging for the service.

> Our service is rendered by an AI.

I really don't know what their eventual value-add is. I doubt anyone's going to be paying 2.5-5% to househunt with an AI.

They say in theOP "Our mission at Modern Realty is to make home buying easier, faster, and far more enjoyable."

But here in the comments, they say their mission is to get rich with AI. Tricky! I wonder which claim is right.

Your communication style in this thread is adversarial and curt, yet you aim to provide good service. You clearly have a very, very long personal journey ahead of you if you want to satisfy the good service objective.

...So being up-front with your pricing, even if that's a "our fees are negotiable but tend to be (flat rate or percentage) around the X range" is a "race to the bottom"?

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